


Just a Scratch

by phipiohsum475



Series: Serial Suicides [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Death, Gen, Self Harm, Stress, Teenlock, accidental suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:46:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2498465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phipiohsum475/pseuds/phipiohsum475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeking relief in self-harm, John accidentally goes too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Scratch

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd nor britpicked. Please feel free to (kindly!) point out any errors.

The box cutter sliced a nice, clean line across his thigh. Redness bubbled up and he swiped a finger through the blood to taste the tang on his tongue. The pain offered momentary relief, and a sense of control that he’d been missing for several weeks.

_Mike was getting married. They’d been mates for years, and he was thrilled for his mate; even if he thought nineteen was a bit young t be tying the knot. But the stag do and the wedding were on separate weekends in some piss ant Irish village where his soon-to-be wife hailed from. He was happy for Mike, he was. But he couldn’t be less excited for the excessive travel in the coming month. For missing the hours spent away from his mates, particularly Sherlock, during their last summer before uni sent them their separate ways. The thought of mingling with Mike’s new friends, the families he’d barely met, and acting as thought their friendship weren’t drifting apart weighed heavily on John._

A second line, parallel to the first. John pulled faster, cut deeper, and the blood welled up more quickly. He watched with pleasure as a drop pooled faster and quicker than its neighbors and rolled down the side of his thigh.

_His summer internship, a research assistant for a hospital, doing grunt work for clinical studies, was a great find. For the first summer, he’d loved it. He’d been able to interview and consent patients, work with the local ethics board, and shadow several physicians. He’d interned again the next summer, and again this summer. But then, two weeks ago, his organization had been bought out by the hospital it worked for. His immediately supervisors had both quit in response and his new supervisor was a bubbly woman who still had yet to convince him of her competence. He couldn’t quite relax around her; he had to relearn rules and regulations which all varied wildly from those to which he’d become accustomed._

The third, fourth, and fifth lines came in rapid succession. He aimed for the deeper cuts that dripped bloody down his skin, leaving stark droplets on the white towel he sat on. The initial sting of the cuts blurred into a steady throb, and he sought more. More pain, more power.

_He recognized he’d been in an odd state of mind. Well, Sherlock recognized it first. “John, your moods and actions have been wildly out of character the last four months. I’ve taken the liberty of researching possible reasons for your behaviors, and decided you should be tested for depression.” It had shaken John, really, to know that he’d gone so low that Sherlock, social inept extraordinaire, could tell something was wrong. He hadn’t wanted to go, but Sherlock threatened to tell his parents if he didn’t go to the appointment Sherlock had scheduled (and really, wasn’t that another sign of how bad things had gotten?), so he found himself with psychiatrist who tried talking too much before prescribing a low dose of sertraline._

The blade revisited its earlier stripes, to hasten the controlled rise of blood to the surface. The long lines bled faster, and a few small rivulets of blood ran down to stain the towel. John felt the calm that came with dominating his mind with the mutilation of his body.

_His jaw clenched painfully, teeth grinding against each other. After the lower dose of the anti-depressant hadn’t brought about the improved mood, his psychiatrist upped the dosage. Within just a few days, he suffered through a less common side effect of the drug. His jaw popped when he talked, his gums ached and his headache ranged from temple to temple. He suspected his mood might have improved, but he couldn’t tell with the relentless discomfort emanating from his jaw._

The full control he sought eluded him and he continued to chase peace of mind at the end of a razor. The standard lines weren’t satisfying him as they had in the past. He barely considered it before he dug the sharp in deep, hoping to gain elation from a flowing river of red pleasure.

_The clients had mailed their protocols just two weeks before the ethics board deadline. The list of documents he’d need to update was as long as his arm, but he had two weeks. Keeping steady hours, methodically fixing each form, he could work even on this tight deadline. Then the information systems department arrived. Under the new organization changes, his computer needed to be updated with the hospital’s software. He arrived on Monday morning to find his computer updated, and his software missing. He called the problem in instantly, but delays cost him a full week. Incapable of working during an entire week, he found that his two week deadline dwindled to four days._

He dug in six more times, the blood streaming from each wound with a steady pace. He felt tired, but he expected it was the chemicals in his system. He gazed fondly on the bloody leg, and the dull throb heightened into a sharper pain. The feeling of contentment was closer, almost within reach.

_The physician principle investigator sent John a scathing email, chastising him for not having the documents ready. “The timing of the upgrade is unfortunate as problems are often a part of the upgrade process. Would have recommended delaying that process until September had I known about it.” John was an intern, who was he to tell I.S. “No, you can’t perform necessary updates on your own hardware”? And then the email ended, “Documents without the benefit of multiple revisions are predictably and understandably inferior.” The doctor insisted on meeting for revisions on Wednesday, taking another two days off his deadline._

The blood gushed heavier than he’d expected; more than he’d ever experienced before. He watched it practically pour from the gashes in his legs and distantly concerned, he doubled up the towel so the bed clothes wouldn’t stain.

_He worked fifteen hours for two and a half days solid, ignoring meals, barely tolerating the aching, grinding, stressful pain throbbing through his jaw and mouth. His tongue burned, it’s wandering against the teeth sharpened though two weeks of grinding left it raw and painful to eat. When the first drafts of the documents, all of the documents, were submitted, he came home. He stole a fifth of scotch out of his sister’s hidden stash and used it to wash down the alprazolam, to quell the anxiety and anguish rushing through the rest of his body. It was all too much. Too much tension, too little pay, too many additional stressors. He'd spent a few hours in A &E when his mother cut her finger too deeply making dinner; a local internet outage prevented him from working at home; and his father badgered him about the chores he’d been neglecting in favor of his internship._

The scotch stopped burning his throat after half the fifth was gone, and the anti-anxiety medication dimmed his perceptions to blind him to the dangers of the volume of blood exiting his body. He only really understood he didn’t want to be caught, to make a mess, to have to talk further to his useless psychiatrist. He wrapped the towel around the deep gashes in his thigh, and stumbled to the bathroom. He sat in the bathtub, and let the warm shower clean the blood off his leg. He relaxed in the warmth of the water, closed his eyes to enjoy the relaxation the combination of scotch, alprazolam and fresh sliced flesh provided him. He slowly fell asleep under the steamy air.

-o-

Sherlock found him soaking wet, pale and unresponsive. The deep, devastating cuts on his legs, gashed far too long from left to right, were cleaned bloodless, much like the rest of John’s body. It took very few deductions to understand what had befallen John. Sherlock fell victim to sentiment, shaking John’s body long after he knew it was gone, sobbing loudly, eventually attracting the attention of John’s family. Ultimately, John's father had to pull Sherlock off his best friend, bellowing as he curled up again the hallway floor.

The funeral was lovely, Sherlock was told. He instead, buried his grief at the end of needle, trying to drown the abundance of sentiment that rendered him fragile and ineffectual. _Never again_ , he promised himself, _caring was not an advantage_.


End file.
